Why you need a live chat on your website and the solution I’ve chosen!

If you sell something online and don’t use a live chat, you potentially loose prospects! Why? Because customers have questions but are not necessarily up to call a phone number or get an appointment with a sale person.

In a survey conducted by Forrester, 44% of respondents said that having a live person answer their questions while they were in the middle of an online purchase was one of the most important features a website could offer.

Your customers want to chat! Here’s why it’s time to listen.

Now that you know how live chat are important for your business’s let’s take a look at the services I’ve tried the past few years. Yup, years. Actually, live chats are not really new and the company Olark is probably one of the oldest to propose live chat and off course the first I’ve worked with.

What live chat solutions I’ve tried?

Olark is one of the most accomplish product you can find and it come with a forever free plan, which is perfect when you start a business and a good reason to use it. I’ve chosen to work with Olark because you can connect your Olark to a chat client via Jabber protocol. For me, if you can’t do that or at list use a desktop client, it’s a deal breaker! Why? Well, many other services propose to use a web dashboard. That means that you have to be connected to the service and have a browser opened all day to answer chat requests. Bro! That to much work. And it’s without saying the shit load of memory Chrome going to suck just for this tab to be open all day.

This is the Zendesk live chat client. Zopin does what Olark do plus it’s integrated with Zendesk (if you using it). I was using Zendesk when I’ve started Rapid Bear Design and they had a chat integration by the time I’ve tried it, but in 2014 they discontinued the support for IM clients and I’ve stopped using it and get back to Olark.

Intercom is a complete customer care toolbox that includes a beautiful live chat. I’m a big fan of Intercom but it’s really a product made for SASS services and it’s kind of expensive (around $150/month for using all the tools and $50 for the chat only) and no free version.

I was very intrigued by Drift as it look like Intercom in the design and I like that ;). Drift is also an “all in-app” that can do follow up mail and you can use it for free. You can actually connect Drift to Slack, that why I’ve tried it but it create a new channel every time you got a message and I feel it messy:

The live chat I’ve chosen to work with

It’s the app I chose to use for Rapid Bear Design and I’m very happy with it! Do you want to know why? Okay, let’s go!

It’s free

Yup, not for 14 days or with limitations, it’s just really 100% completely free. They actually make money by handle chat for you if you want.

It has a dedicated Mac/PC/Mobile/Web app

That the biggest advantage for me as I can manage all my chat directly from my computer with the Mac app and if I’m on the road with the Android app. Honestly, I don’t get why other apps don’t do that? The very purpose of a live chat isn’t to be there at the right moment for your prospects or customers? How could you achieve this with just a web dashboard…

It does pretty much everything the others do:

Custom Widget

Chat History

Automated Triggers

Shortcuts

Multiple Agents

Aliases

Departments

Visitor Monitoring

Multi Lingual

etc..

Plus they always work to add new stuff. Live video and screen sharing are on the way for example.

Conclusion

A lot of solutions are out there and I’ve probably just scratched the surface, but Tawk is definitely for me the best solution available! And you? What solution did you choose and why?